Said And Done
by alienesque
Summary: In which Boyd eventually...EVENTUALLY asks Raylan to be his Best Man.


Part One of Ain't That Something

* * *

They really were destined to live out their days in a vortex of perpetual antagonism, him and Boyd, like blood chasing water down a faucet drain.

"So that was the plan all along," Raylan grounded out, but it was a funny thing, really. He tipped his hat when Boyd approached in that usual contradiction of harmless reserve and dangerous proposition, eyed him wearily as he settled against the false front of Arlo's house, just as he himself had a good while ago, on the other side of the porch steps.

Raylan had seen him coming for some time, having watched him hike up the hill in a way that could only be described as a pleasant stroll. With hands pocketed and shoulders hunched, Boyd had kept his gaze fixed upon the grassy terrain, letting the sun beat down against his rustic features, and Raylan couldn't've helped the lighthearted scowl upon his lips even if he'd tried. _Here comes some bullshit_, he mentally griped. Still, as strange as he felt it hateful, he couldn't think of anyone he wanted to speak to more, in that moment, than one Boyd Crowder.

"Get Gable to pull the deal, track down Drew Thompson yourself, then give him up to Arlo so that Arlo could hand him over to the Feds and get a _new_ deal."

"Why…" Boyd paused to smile, looking up at Raylan from beneath an air of humor. "Hello to you, too, Raylan."

"Am I wrong?"

"Let it never be said that Raylan Givens is not the smartest lawman in all of Kentucky."

"Taking swings at me now."

"Well, Raylan…you pitched."

Raylan hummed a noncommittal agreement, narrowed eyed and idly amused, twirling a half-emptied bottle of Jim Beam in his hands. He should have known…should have known not to underestimate Boyd. It was, as they say, an egregious oversight, one he would have seen if not otherwise preoccupied. What with Winona and the baby, his working outside cases, taking bounty jobs to scrape up enough cash for Winona and the baby. This shitkicker on shitkicker crime fiasco with Drew Thompson, and Arlo, and the people of Harlan, with their scheming and plotting and whoring and murdering…it was enough to turn even the driest of men to the bottle. Not a dry man, he was, but the inclination to drink like a fish never struck him so fervently as to compel him to give credit where credit was due. Raylan was a very, very drunk man, now, nursing his tenth in what was sure to be an admirable line, and just pissed enough to lament the fact that Boyd was, at the very least, a very, very smart criminal.

"You really think I was gonna let your daddy spend his twilight years held up in some clink?"

Boyd could've done _anything_—could've _been_ anything.

"I really thought you might."

A short way from shameful, Raylan reckoned.

"Was sorta hoping you had, actually," Raylan managed, his throat catching with disappointment. "Was all sorts of certain that such a move would result in one less burden for the both of us."

"Well that's where you're wrong, Raylan," Boyd interjected, shifting simultaneously backwards and forwards. "I told you I consider Arlo my kin, my family," he challenged Raylan's sight with an appallingly sincere stare, "and a man never turns his back on his own."

"Mm." Raylan dipped his head low, shadowing the sadistic grin now tugging at the corners of his lips with the brim of his hat. "I'm sure Johnny Crowder would be disinclined to agree," he purred.

"Well, now, I did everything I could for Cousin Johnny. Tried to help the man…but he just didn't wanna be helped." Boyd scuffed the heel of his boot against the pavement beneath him and crossed his legs, just as Raylan had. Boyd shook his head, slowly, in some semblance of sorrow, it tilting ever so slightly towards Raylan. "It's a shame …"

"Is it," Raylan grunted.

"What with him killing Delroy, unbeknownst to me and Ava—handin' _Audrey's _over to us, so to further dilute his transgression. Puttin' Colt up to the task of killing Ellen May, who, bless her heart, had the misfortune of witnessing his most heinous crimes of theft and murder. Not to mention him conspiring with Wynn Duffy to kill little ol' me."

"Little ol' you, huh?"

"I think we can both agree that Johnny's…_incarceration_ has resulted in one less burden for the both of us."

Raylan lifted his bottle to his lips and took another quick swill, watching Boyd from out his peripheral with the fiercest of fiery stares. Ten bourbons in and it was Boyd Crowder giving him the headache of his life. Despite all desire to disagree, the truth in Boyd's contentment left him equally satisfied, and that annoyed him.

He was satisfied that one less Crowder roamed the earth not living out the rest of their lowly days in a federal penitentiary, surrounded, twenty-four seven, by high walls topped with razor wire and armed guards prepared to shoot at any squirrelly movement…and that annoyed him, because the purveyor of all of Johnny's bullshit, of which Raylan held no doubt stained more than Johnny's hands red alone, now stood beside him, reaching out to take his Jim Beam.

Boyd quipped as Raylan passed over the bottle, "Why you look like a man with great burden on his mind."

"Oh Boyd…" And there it was again, the relentless grin Raylan simply could not restrain now gracing his disheveled features. Every other statement out of Boyd's mouth amused him, made him laugh until he cried tears of tightly furled rage. "Nothing too severe…just wondering what Theo Tonin and his merry band of misfit assholes thought of your detour from the original arrangement, is all. You were in their employment, were you not?"

"If you are asking me if I was called upon to provide a particular service," Boyd paused, holding Raylan's bottle of Jim Beam by the neck and still against his lips, "I find myself disinclined to confirm such a notion."

"You were working for 'em," Raylan whined, adamantly, with a mind inclined to point fingers, and he felt entitled if not a bit childish. Going in circles had nothing on a conversation with Boyd Crowder, and yet, stubbornly, Raylan never backed down from the challenge, attempting to break the cycle time and time again. A part of him still felt like that not-so-fresh-faced nineteen-year-old around Boyd, a Harlan son bathed in sweat and caked in coal, shooting shit with a friend of equal disposition. Boyd, still with a full head of hair, and Raylan, with hair not yet stricken grey, sharing the strongest of straight whiskey, laughing at having escaped the bowels of deep mining by the short and curlies yet again, and now…a drunk Raylan couldn't even summon an appropriate metaphor.

"That remains to be seen."

"And I wonder," Raylan reached back to scratch the nape of his neck, eyes blown and neck scrunched, shrugging as he dragged his hand about the brim of his hat and tipped it forward, "just what they would do to little ol' Boyd Crowder, who welched on a deal and all the ramifications therein."

Boyd fixed him with a stare Raylan felt warm the left side of his face. "Well, I think you already know the answer to that, Raylan Givens."

"I do, do I?"

"Theo Tonin and his Detroit thugs are no more a concern of ours now than my Cousin Johnny."

"That's right," Raylan intoned, eyeing Boyd and grinning still, watching, this time, as the other native son of Harlan took a swift pull from what remained of his bourbon whiskey. "You had friends in _higher_ places."

"That would imply I had friends in high places to begin with."

"You had me, didn't you?"

Raylan and Boyd shared a look, a fleeting glance filled with healthy, balanced doses of politeness and suspicion, pleasantry and skepticism, before Boyd looked down, smiling, and Raylan looked off into the far distance, watching the wind rustle leaves, whistle through hills, and disturb the fine state of Kentucky's bumpkin backwater Harlan County. _Just like Boyd_, Raylan thought, shifting in place. Boyd seemed to take this as a cue to return the bottle dangling between his fingertips. Raylan took it, gratefully, in need of another long haul.

"I wasn't aware we were on friendly speaking terms."

"Is that right?"

"That's right, Raylan."

"Well, Boyd…" Raylan downed the last of his Jim Beam, "hmm," wiped the excess liquor from his mouth, and proceeded, "you know where to find me, _apparently_, if ever in dire need to discuss things. Like, say, your deepest, darkest secrets. For instance, have you killed anyone lately? Let me know. I am genuinely concerned in what you'd have to say in that regard. Or, hell, just give me a call if you ever again find yourself in a pinch with Harlan's _high society_, and I'll come down in one fell swoop and clean house so you won't have to play the shitty hand they dealt ya." He gestured in Boyd's direction with the now empty bottle, brow furrowed against the other man. "I'll handle your Delroys and your Dickeys and your Duffys and your Dewey Crows," he was rambling now, "I'll stamp out your competition, because that's what you need me to do, and, of course, this is always about what I can do for you, Boyd."

"You're rambling, Raylan."

"Am I?" Raylan shrugged, dropping the bottle of Jim Beam down with a definitive thud, on the barbecue stand of a grill that had been set up against the front porch for as long as he could remember. It twirled and stilled next to nine other empty bottles. "I don't know, Boyd," he sighed, dragging a hand down and up and across his face. "Considering I put away some pretty powerful Clover Hill folk and, in the process, aided your continued existence to pursue whatever bullshit crime enterprise you've got planned next, you can indulge me in what I've got to say for a little while longer."

"Raylan…?" Boyd regarded him with eyes wide and, as Raylan saw through a clouded haze, lost, the only look he suspected ever truly genuine of Boyd. It was the same expression he'd given him the day his daddy, Bo Crowder, killed all his men and kidnapped Ava. Raylan still remembered the way Boyd damn near stumbled into his motel room, searching for a reason Raylan never thought to supply. "I did not kill them Clover Hill men."

Raylan fixed Boyd with his clouded, indeterminate gaze.

"I guess there's that."

He believed him, anyway, despite every conceivable reason for Boyd to lie. Had he not uncovered it himself, perhaps, the depths of corruption never before unearthed, with Boyd caught between a rock and a hard place of his own creating, Raylan might not have been swayed either way. So let Kentucky's elite do away with Harlan's lowest common denominator. Let anyone who's ever made a shady dealing with Boyd Crowder set him up and watch him fall, stab him in the back and leave him to bleed dry.

If not then Boyd would just shed his skin and slither away, giving way to there always being some other time and some other place, in some immediate future, for him to bare fangs and strike.

"Of course that don't mean you wouldn't've killed those men or had them killed, if it suited your purpose."

_Always._

"One does what they must to be alive."

"Clearly," Raylan seethed, arresting his bottom lip with the grip of his upper teeth. "Still," he blinked, "gotta hand it to ya. Scoreboard has you at four-for-oh—well, five, if ya count the time I shot you."

"Strange as it may seem, Raylan, I do not."

"Oh?" Raylan cocked his head, smiling his squinty-eyed smile. "Good for you…"

"Maybe it wasn't the lord acting through you, bringing you back to Harlan to set my path anew," Boyd shook his head and smiled, as though not even he could fathom the depths of spiritual belief he had once, very briefly, held so dear, "but there's no denying that your very presence has made its mark on our little corner of the world." Raylan felt Boyd's gaze drift away from him then, to stare out at that endless expense of Harlan land that stretched far beyond what the human eye could see. "I've no doubt in my mind that I would not be the man I am today, if not guided by your actions."

Raylan nodded his head, sniffing, apathetic in his acceptance.

"I bet," he grumbled, reaching back and over the posts of the front porch railing, to where his Aunt Helen had liked to keep a dilapidated end table beside a dirty reclining chair. "Someone would have killed you yokes ago, I imagine." He reached and reached until he found it, the neck of another bottle of Jim Beam, and offered it to Boyd, who declined with a politely raised hand, so Raylan took it for himself.

"I do believe you underestimate me."

"Believe you me, Boyd," Raylan strangled the cap off and tossed it, eyebrows raised, "I don't."

"Nor I you," Boyd leant sideways, gracing Raylan's peripheral vision with the familiar sight of wildly cropped raven hair, intense hazel-green eyes, and a strong, solid jaw that Raylan had grown so hatefully fond of wanting to hurt, "Raylan."

_I should have known_, Raylan mentally grieved, turning to face Boyd. Boyd, pocketing his hands again, Raylan, kneading the heels of his boots into cracks in the cement, and the two eyed each other, in a way Raylan imagined two predators stalking the same prey would before the inevitable pounce. Feeling his brain work out the kinks in that analogy forced a harsh chuckle from the depths of his lungs, a shit-eating grin to tug at his lips and a look of bemusement to overshadow his stalwart stare.

"Might I inquire what is it you find so highly amusing, Raylan?" Boyd asked, managing a grin of his own, but it was an uncertain bravado, the faintest twitch of confusion in those maniacally volatile eyes of his that only served to compound Raylan's amusement. The spiteful lawman in him considered letting Boyd sweat out an answer, prepared to endure the full brunt of the man's curiosity, but the inebriated layman and, albeit reluctant, acquaintance in him found he didn't give enough shits to withhold from Boyd the commentary now dancing around in his head.

"Boyd, Boyd, Boyd…" Raylan handled the body of his Stetson, concealing the broad smile beneath it. "You," he admonished simply, as it seemed so damn plain obvious to him. "You and me and this place," his eyes darted up, down, and around, wandering with an inability to conceal a learned contempt for their current surroundings, "and the fact that I can't step one god damn foot out of Harlan without being hauled back into this mess."

"Whatever do you mean, Raylan?"

"Let me ask you something…" and Raylan paused to wrap his head around the question, pinching his brow between a thumb and forefinger. It was just so that Boyd's quiet patience managed to piss him off even more than his perpetual talking did. "At any point," Raylan swallowed the words, blinked away a wave of disorientation, and started again. "In the time it took to happen upon the idea that it would be wise to scheme a meet-an'-greet out of Theo Tonin, only to turn up empty-handed, did it ever occur that such a plan would not end well for you."

For a brief moment, Boyd looked contemplative or, rather, pretended to look contemplative as he considered or pretended to consider the inquiry. Either way, and even in his drunken stupor, Raylan felt a change in the wind, saw the shift in Boyd's eyes from arrogance to a flash of frozen terror…and then back to arrogance, the insufferable son-of-a-bitch.

"Why, I had faith in the various government agencies serving to protect our great state of Kentucky and all its children"—

"_Jesus_, forget I asked"—

"—and you, Raylan," Boyd tilted his head up against a column, eyes bright and open to the world. "I respect you enough to acknowledge that, when it comes to your _particular_ skillset, there are none who can compare. I knew you'd track us down, under false pretenses but no less knowledgeable of what would, inevitably, play out."

"Damn me and my knowledgeable ways."

"And however many grievances shared between you and me, ain't a sentiment in the world contemptuous enough to stop you from taking down a bad man with an aim to kill."

Raylan opened his mouth, prepared to refute this, but, aw hell…truer words had never been spoken as of late. So he lifted the bottle now gripped tightly in his hand to his lips and consumed, watching Boyd the entire time. Boyd had taken to staring off into the distance again, off towards the rolling fields they used to trouble as kids.

Raylan let up, eventually, and cleared his throat.

"That's all very kind of you to say and I appreciate you thinking so highly of me, Boyd."

"I simply speak the truth and nothing but the truth so help me God."

"Except I'm under the insane impression that this has less to do with my _particular_ skillset and more to do with you havin' known full well it was Johnny who tipped us off."

Boyd ducked his head, lips curling up at each end, and, with the nerve to look him dead in the eye, and supplied, "The world is possessed by coincidences, son."

"Or motive and opportunity."

"Well, I didn't want to be the one to say it, but"—

"And still getting the law to do your dirty work, too, uh?"

"As I recall, Raylan, I once told you I had a big tank. Guess I neglected to mention the good mileage I get on it, too."

Raylan kept his cool, scoffed off the urge to fell the other man with a blow so forceful that Boyd'd be concussed into a vow of silence.

"Must've stung," Raylan shrugged instead, heaving dramatically, "figuring it was Johnny who gave you up."

"We all have our crosses to bear, Raylan."

Boyd didn't miss a beat.

"Oh, of course, Boyd," and neither did Raylan, lest he give Boyd the satisfaction of having felt he in any way influenced what he had to say. "Guess Johnny couldn't live right with himself, knowing all that he knew of his cousin Boyd," he hummed, and when Boyd offered no response to this—such was an isolated incident if Raylan had ever experienced one—he continued, "or could it've been him wanting out from under Cousin Boyd's shadow and so damning the consequences…like, say, oh hell—I don't know—being implicated in the murder of Delroy Baker and in a conspiracy to kill Ellen May."

"Cousin Johnny always did possess a very vivid imagination."

"Bet ya didn't know it was Johnny who tipped off Limehouse about Devil's _untimely_ demise…told 'em where you dumped the body."

That got Boyd's attention, or, at the very least, set Boyd's face in stone. That quiet threat; the cold-blooded conviction masquerading as calm and civility appeared like an old friend to Raylan, even if he couldn't well recall the last time Boyd had stared him down in such a manner. He supposed the last time might've been the point at which he'd seen fit to shoot Boyd through the chest.

"Though it troubles me to believe Johnny would do such a thing, betray me by spreading his unfounded accusations amongst them folk up in Noble's Hollow," Raylan squinted his eyes and grounded his teeth, still, to this day, absolutely astounded, "I did have my suspicions."

"Did you, now?" Raylan spurned, too preoccupied with the sudden realization that Boyd wasn't staring at him at all in that way. Boyd was staring through him, into the past, where he could confront his cousin without the messy business of having to kill the man. Dare Raylan even begin to believe it, but, in retrospect, the very real certainty of Johnny being framed and incarcerated for his cousin's crimes might have been a show of mercy from Boyd.

Raylan seriously considered putting down the Jim Beam.

"All the more reason for me to do right by your daddy," Boyd went on speaking, setting his sight towards the skies above. "Him being put away for a crime he did not commit was him looking out for me, Raylan. My only regret is that, until very recently, I could not so readily return the favor."

"Boyd," Raylan put the Jim Beam down on the banister. He hooked his right hand into his jean pocket, thumbing at the fabric of his quarter-sleeve baseball tee. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say I just heard a confession out of you."

"I make no confessions, because my conscience is clear," Boyd declared, his eyes settling on Raylan. "Your daddy is a free man."

Raylan inhaled what felt like the whole of the world, incensed, searching for the spitefulness in the other man's face and finding nothing but warmth, the gaze of a man thinking of someone held so dear that the thought of them suffering would bring out the best of him.

Then he remembered who this was, standing before him, and that whatever good came out of Boyd Crowder was secondary, at best, and, at worst, wasted on Arlo.

"So you don't give a shit about Johnny. Who does?" Raylan fell into the left side of his body, collapsing ever so inelegantly against the front porch. Boyd watched him, patiently, almost regally, his eyes reluctant to stray from Raylan's own increasingly bold stare. "Yet you were willing to put everything on the line for Arlo?"

"Is that so hard to believe?"

"I don't think I'm qualified to answer that," Raylan said, darting for his eleventh bottle.

"Because?"

Raylan pulled back, Jim Beam in hand, overwhelmed by a disgruntled bemusement. He sensed the world turning, felt it force him in one direction, so he stumbled forward, his drink swaying in hand, nursing a newfound inability to comprehend one Boyd Crowder.

"Who are you?"

"You know me."

"Mm, just when I think I've got ya figured…" Raylan shook his head, glaring at the ground, and swallowed hard. "The shithead white supremacist, wielding rocket launchers, robbing banks and blowing shit up…or, maybe you're the reformed sinner with a messiah complex, struggling to rejoin a law-abiding society. Hell, maybe that's all horseshit but, to gain hold of Harlan's drug trade, it didn't hurt to try every angle," he produced a shallow laugh, "just like your daddy."

"The point you are attempting to bring to light would be."

"You've killed a lot of people, Boyd."

"A lot of bad people, Raylan. Not unlike you, I might add."

"You sayin' we're the same."

"Would it be so far-fetched to suggest us cut from the same cloth?"

"Jesus, I hope not…" Raylan grinned into another gulp, brow hardened. "You and me blood related?" His lips twitched. "I've got enough ancestral problems as it is."

Boyd stepped towards Raylan, closing the distance between them.

"Now, Raylan, you know full-well what I mean."

"Yeah, Boyd," Raylan pressed into his Jim Beam, "I know what you mean."

The following silence deafened the afternoon, aiding the void in the air, the nothingness of the goings-on in Harlan County. It was god damn eerie, and Raylan knew it wasn't right. It was like the calm before a storm, only, the storm had already passed through, leaving, in its wake, nothing but a clean and soundless slate.

Even Boyd, the epitome of destruction, appeared like calm waters, a peaceful stream running through the hollows and the hills, reaching everyone and everything, exposing their people to sustenance both benevolent and sinister. Like the Bennetts before him, Boyd was working out an equilibrium of sorts, balancing the decadence with goodwill.

Now, in whatever form that goodwill saw fit to take shape…if Raylan thought too hard on it, the bottle in his hand may just as well become a weapon, and the sense he would attempt to knock into Boyd subsequent to that conversion would result in an endless tussle about the front yard of his childhood home. Him, at Olympic levels of intoxication, and Boyd, going along for the ride, and with no mediator to see an end to it…why, Raylan suspected such an endeavor would last long into the night and probably far into the morning, too.

"It's as silent as the grave out there, Raylan."

"It is," Raylan nodded, staring out that way.

"A bit aberrant for our people. Then again, ain't anybody dying as of late, so I guess my concerns are, at current point and time, mincemeat."

"Boyd," just when Raylan had grown fond of the quiet, "shut up."

"Oh, I'm sorry—did I strike a nerve?"

"Woke up round twelve, been drinking since then. You start speaking in food and my stomach'll start a protest."

"Well, far be it from me to feed your hunger pains," Boyd cooed, and Raylan would kick himself later for finding his sense of humor. "I won't pretend to believe I know what remains of this residence," Raylan watched the other man give the house a fleeting glance, almost as if uncertain as to whether or not still allowed to lay eyes upon it; this place he had, clearly, grown some attachment to…in his own criminally repurposing way, "but, if memory serves me right, I do recall your daddy liked to keep a stash of beef jerky in the top drawer of the desk by the front entryway."

"Hell, think I didn't already know that?" Raylan snapped, but it was playful, it was disarming, and Boyd looked on, unfazed and as amused as ever. "No matter how many coins I threw into a fountain, the amount of times I held my breath under highway tunnels and wished otherwise that, at some point, I just stopped keepin' count, or prayed in the middle of a night filled with drunken hollers and shatterin' glass…" Raylan looked off, towards the hills, lamenting through gritted teeth, "I still got Arlo as a daddy, first and foremost."

Another bout of silence crept up, from both their parts, and Raylan relinquished himself to his whiskey once more. Not so readily occupied, Boyd had taken to watching him, waiting, or calculating, which Raylan would bet a darkhorse in last as the likelier of the two. Boyd's all encompassing yet indiscernible stare unnerved Raylan in a way that wouldn't've sober, to the point that he felt suddenly exposed, vulnerable in a way he rather preferred not to be.

For once, in all the years they'd known each other, Raylan was relieved when Boyd eventually started talking again.

The Crowder began, solemnly, "I guess there's no denying blood, no matter how bad."

"Guess not."

"Everybody and their mama know you got the wounds to prove it, Raylan."

"That I do, Boyd."

"Had I encountered the Arlo of your household, whiles we was growing up, I imagine I might regard your daddy in a similar capacity." Boyd rested an arm against the banister, settling further into the façade of Arlo's house. "I suspect that's why you're so anxious to get this property off the market…perchance to rid your life of demons past."

"That's right, Boyd," Raylan frowned, reflecting on the difficulties of that enterprise thus far. Acknowledging Boyd with a sideways glance, he elaborated, "You're not wrong in your suspicion. Arlo signed over the property, when his last run-in with the law—you remember? He murdered Trooper Tom Bergen, as he puts it, to protect you…" Raylan paused, his expression troubled well enough, as he stared down into the depths of his Jim Beam, unsure whether to even invoke the knowledge, "…thought it was me, of course, but that's neither here nor there. Never once denied it, so what little respect I would have had for him, had I _any_ left, would have remained. Besides, it was only after admitting to the murder of Derek Lennox, Devil—now…you remember Devil, right Boyd?"

"You have mentioned him more than once now, but yes, Raylan," Boyd paused, voice darkening, "I do." He had the decency to, at least, sound remorseful. Though, Raylan reasoned it more telling that Boyd hadn't gone on, on some elaborate remark or another. A silence befell Boyd. When Raylan lifted his gaze, he saw an uncanny resemblance to regret in the man, who still sought to hold his head high, even as his jaw clenched tight and his Adam's apple quivered.

"What, Boyd," Raylan prodded, "got nothing smart to say?"

"I'm afraid I do not, Raylan." Boyd kept his eyes dead on him, challenging what they both knew to be true already. "A word of respect is always of good intent, but I prefer to let the dead rest in peace."

"Fair enough."

Raylan drank.

"You were saying…"

"Mm, right." Raylan cleared his throat, his slightly skewed depth of perception causing him to sit his bottle down against the tips of Boyd's fingers. "So Arlo signed over the property, and I've been meaning to sell it off ever since."

"Been meaning to?"

"'ve been fixing to…" Boyd gave him a look, the kind that spoke to the bits of old bicycle parts strewn about the tall weeds overrunning the yard, the broken swing-set rusting away near the realtor sign, not to mention the porcelain tub full of broken televisions and other discarded electronic devices that lined the walkway leading up to the front of the house. Raylan thought of how that boy Yahoo's blood now stained the living room rug a muddy red, of how a pool of it had dried on the hardwood floor. Piles of squatter soda and beer cans littered almost every inch of the place, disturbed only by the remnants of a violent confrontation. The smell of death festered in every nook and cranny of the house, having settled into the walls and peeled at the paint, chipped away at windowsills and off-kilter doorframes. Upstairs, downstairs, and back outside, it persisted, until it seemed only appropriate that a family plot of tombstones plagued the rockiest path off the property and out into the world of the living.

Raylan still hadn't gotten around to patching up those god damn holes in the dining room wall.

"'ve been trying to," Raylan relented…hell—he had every intention of gettin' rid of the camper, too.

"I see," Boyd smiled. He went to say something but stopped himself, only to start up anew, "Well, Raylan, I believe today just might be your lucky day."

"Oh?" Raylan squinted, his brow rising into his hairline, his grin reaching ear-to-ear. "You, showing up here, unannounced, and me not yet having had…" Raylan tilted the bottle still held loosely in his hand, tilting his head all the same. "Well, I guess this is lunch."

"Beef jerky's soundin' mighty pleasant, right about now," Boyd supposed. "You know, Ava used to cook up one hell of an omelet in this house. I always cooked the bacon, though. Was kind of a specialty of mine, curing it in cinnamon, giving that sweet an' savory tang to it."

"Boyd," Raylan sighed, sight reeling and eyelids shuddering low, "what did I just say."

"Raylan, if you'll indulge, I wouldn't be averse to putting down an' cooking us up a few strips."

"That's the point I've been trying to get at, Boyd. Now, Arlo signed over the property, and, since then, I've done away with all perishables, _including _the god damn beef jerky."

"Beef jerky's a nonperishable, Raylan." Raylan waved him off, his correction, the throbbing pain playing at the forefront of his mind, but to no avail. His head still hurt, Boyd was still right, and Boyd was still there, looking as modest as ever.

"You know what I mean, Boyd," Raylan murmured, raising hands to rub at his temples.

"Yes, Raylan," Boyd smiled some more. "I know what you mean."

Raylan lifted his hat to run a hand up his forehead and through his hair, feeling momentarily alleviated of the minute pressure brought on by its snug fit. Through all this, he remained astutely aware of Boyd's attentive eyes and knowing smirk, the smooth way he pulled back his coat flaps to grip his waistline, revealing the chain to the pocket watch in his vest pocket.

"What is it…a headache?"

"Like you wouldn't believe."

"Brought on by a lack of food and an excess of Jim Beam, of that I've no doubt."

"You think?"

"What you need is water, son."

"No shit."

"With ice," Boyd hissed, "on a hot day like this? I'm awfully parched, myself, but I have no wish to muddle my mind with a week's worth of alcoholic consumption."

"Well, Boyd…" Raylan downed the rest of his drink, out of spite more than anything else, and slammed it down on the grill, readjusting his hat as he went along. "Ain't anything but Jim Beam and Wild Turkey in there. You want water, you can drink from a hose."

"Well, that's all very fine, Raylan, and I'll be sure to take that into consideration some other time"—

"You do that"—

"—but I think I'm gonna have to pass up on that offer."

"Your loss," Raylan hummed, brandishing a smug little grin, but putting Boyd Crowder off would take a lot more than the small comfort of giving him shit, Raylan knew this. Something in the troubled way Boyd looked between him and the empty bottles behind him told Raylan he had failed to raise the other man's ire. He sensed a budding frustration, more than anything else.

_Just as well_, Raylan thought.

"Are you quite done yet?"

Raylan glanced over the front porch, where he knew one last bottle of Jim Beam waited sleeved in one of the casings still sitting on the side-table. He turned back to Boyd and shrugged, "Well, I brought out two six-packs…I think it would be pretty irresponsible of me to bring 'em out and not finish 'em," he reasoned, humorously, and that Boyd did not appear similarly amused was but the cherry on top an ice-cream sundae. Not in any way split, anyway, what with his forehead threatening to overthrow his eyesight. "What? You suddenly concerned with my drinking habits?"

Boyd said nothing, at first. He just stared off as though forced to consider an offer he couldn't refuse. Though highly entertained by the thought, it reminded Raylan that he still needed to go through all the videos, books, and other family possessions still sitting in the house, neglected on dusty shelves and shoved in stuck drawers.

"I think I'm gonn' take you up on that offer now, Raylan."

Raylan handed Boyd the last bottle of Jim Beam without looking at it, knowing already that that was what Boyd wanted. Boyd handled the bottle with a softer expression, opened it with poise, being mindful enough about it all to set the cap on top of the banister, something that, even before ten go's of it, Raylan hadn't the patience or concern for.

Raylan gave him the courtesy of polishing off a few mouthfuls before engaging him in conversation.

"You said today's my lucky day," he brought up, shooting his chin out towards Boyd. "Why?"

Boyd licked at his straighter-than-thou teeth, his eyes round and vigilant.

"Well, I think I might be able to relieve you of some headache, is all."

"I'm listening," and Raylan really was, really was invested in hearing whatever endless stream of bullshit would spill from Boyd next. Whether he was that far gone or that untroubled, Raylan couldn't bother to work out, but he held onto his belt and leaned in closer. Figuring how long it would take for Boyd to say something that would make him want to hit him was like attending a family function…being forced into games you'd never play with anyone outside your kin because you didn't have to.

"What would you say if I told you that the solution to your realty venture stands before you now," Boyd eyed the house, briefly, before setting sights on him again, "that I was one of very few people interested in purchasing your property?"

_Not even a full thirty seconds._

"I'd say my asking price is too low."

Boyd looked down, marveling at his bottle of Jim Beam, and smiled, "I wouldn't contest a higher mark-up, all humor aside. As long as it's reasonable, of course, within a range that correlates in value."

"Oh, of course."

"At least, with me, you need not concern yourself with all the renovating. I'd take the place as is and spare you a considerable amount of heavy lifting."

"Splendid," Raylan bit out, his jaw clenched too tightly to say much else.

"Well, does that not help alleviate your concerns?" Boyd asked, indisputably eager in his curiosity. "That's one less worry for Raylan Givens to think about, wondering if someone's gonn' come around and buy off his daddy's property. You need not be tethered to the likes of Harlan County in this manner."

"What happened to Clover Hill?" Raylan asked heatedly, incapable of not asking heatedly. "Mm? What happened to you and Ava moving out to the suburbs and leaving all this hillbilly bullshit behind you?"

"So was the plan," Boyd said, watching Raylan carefully, "but plans change, Raylan, and Ava and I have jointly decided against it. For you see, we came to a realization."

"Mm-Hmm."

"That where we choose to live ain't about money or geography…but a matter of pride. We lost sight of ourselves, thinking that to move as such would somehow elevate us. That them Clover Hill people are somehow better than us in Harlan, because they got money and they got power, but it's not true, Raylan, it's not true…they're just as pathetic, just as flesh and bone, and, worse still, they look out for nobody but themselves."

"I still don't see what this decision's got to do with you wanting to buy my god damn house, Boyd."

"Look around, Raylan."

"I'm looking," Raylan said, not looking.

"A nice country home, two-story, three beds, surrounded by acres of vibrant foliage and rolling hills…wide open spaces?" Boyd bore teeth in a broad grin, being decidedly pleased with the description, as Raylan despised thinking Boyd should've penned it for him. "Why, this is a family home, Ava and I know that. Not to mention its centricity to the land. From here we can be the overseers of Harlan County and look out for our people."

"And yet I am surprised."

"Better to be the rulers of your own kingdom than the peasants of somebody else's," Boyd went on, adding keenly and with little pause, "and you know what that makes you?"

"Your royal jester?"

"No, Raylan," Boyd smiled, affronted in good nature. "Why, you're our knight in shining armor, come to aid us in our times of need."

"If you're trying to piss me off, you're succeeding."

"That isn't not my intent, I assure you."

"No, just the unintended effect," Raylan snapped, glaring at Boyd still and still trying very, very hard to withhold his wrath, to deny Boyd the satisfaction of getting the best of him. No number of flowery words could disguise the daring in Boyd's eyes, crazy, unpredictable Boyd, and Raylan had to wonder truly if it had not been the man's meaning, all along, to end up on the receiving end of a beat-down.

"Does it so trouble you, to imagine Ava and me wanting to make this house our home?"

"Yes."

"And why is that?"

Raylan held a deep breath, brow rising.

"I don't want your blood money, Boyd."

"Money's money, Raylan," Boyd countered matter-of-factly, "and, last I checked, no blood was spilt over the fruits of my labor. Now, you still got your man, and I practically served you up Theo Tonin on a silver platter."

"No, no, no—I didn't get my man, Boyd," Raylan exhaled, reeling back. "The FBI and the US Marshal Service got their man…Arlo got his deal, and you got your money."

"As per the arrangements made between all parties involved, Raylan"—

"And what did I get? Other than you, coming here, putting yourself in a line of fire you do not want to be in." Boyd followed the movement Raylan felt of his hand inching closer to the government-issued Glock holstered at his hip. He would part with his coat and his badge but not his gun.

Not in Harlan.

"What are you gonna do, Raylan? You gonna shoot me?"

"I have in the past," and if he thought it would make Boyd go away, Raylan would.

"I gave you Theo Tonin, _Chief Deputy_ US Marshal," Boyd stated boldly, stepping forward. "I helped take down Nicky Augustine and the Detroit Mafia. Now, if you want to thank me, you can start by selling me this property at an agreed-upon price."

Raylan watched Boyd sit his whiskey on top of the banister with an unnaturally loud thump, dimly reminding him of his current state of drunkenness and the clouded judgment said drunkenness had caused. Though many a circumstance had, in the past, forced his hand, Raylan drew the line at becoming that asshole who pulled on people while intoxicated.

But boy was it tempting, just this once, to make an exception.

"How much you offering?" Raylan asked, beckoned by curiosity, biting his pride but standing his ground. Boyd stood but a few inches before him, so close that he could see the uncertainty behind the entitlement in Boyd's eyes.

"Two-fifty."

"…Seems more than fair," Raylan managed, through pursed lips, eyes sharp but blinking, rapidly, as his mind struggled to wrap itself around such a gross overpayment. Not one inch of his childhood home, from the spotty plumbing, to the rickety floorboards, the outdated kitchen set, holes in the wall, blood on the floor, balcony just threatening to collapse at a moment's time, and missing door, was worth two-fifty. "Throw in another hundred, for the hell of it, and it's yours."

Boyd gave a curt nod, reaching for the bottle with deliberation in his eyes, and Raylan thought he had him. The blind wouldn't pay that much for Arlo's property, and, even if Boyd agreed to the tune of three-fifty, Raylan could find peace in knowing Boyd spent money he had not lawfully obtained on a property that nobody else wanted.

Boyd stopped short of his whiskey, lips quirked and eyes lidded, pulling away.

"You know…word has it you've been squirreling bounty money."

"Has it now?" Raylan scoffed, but the grin on his face faltered at the thought of his business not being his own. "And whose word told you that?"

"Well the criminal circuit ain't as sophisticated a channel of communication as, say, the invasive telecommutes of the United States government, Raylan, but we do get by."

"I bet."

"I can't say it doesn't make much sense, you being who you are…"

"In what sense is that?"

"In that even a lawman as righteous as you would sooner break rules and regulations, in the pursuit of providing for those you call your own." Raylan would have argued that Boyd had already seen him break rules and regulations in the name of personal pursuit, that his observation was neither new nor enlightening, but why the hell bother helping to prove Boyd's point? "After all, you gonn' need to save up on all you can get to support that baby girl of yours."

"Excuse me?"

"The little one on the way?" Boyd clarified, as if clarification was necessary. Raylan held onto his hat and held onto to his hip, in a troubled fit, having grown an immunity to Boyd's penchant for dramatic gestures, his sweeping rhetoric, but not so much the intent of his words. "See, I find no hesitance in parting ways with 'nother hundred thousand if it means helping to provide for the child who might one day shed a little ray of sunlight on my dear friend, Raylan Givens."

"Well…that's sweet," Raylan grunted, his voice escaping him forceful and blunt. His hands held limply against his hips and his stance shifted, alternating between right and left footing, as the discomfort of familiarity eventually began to dissipate. "In a cheating-Detroit-thugs-out-of-drug-money-paid-to-m e-to-bring-'em-a-man-they-intended-to-kill-and-now -using-said-ill-gotten-gains-to-purchase-property- from-a-federal-law-officer sorta way."

"Well, not everything can be so easily sentimentalized, Raylan."

"Or so excused, Boyd."

"Is there nothing I can say to prove the sincerity of my words?"

Raylan felt the verdict out, as on this he could not decide. For Boyd was as often full of shit as he was of truth and did himself no favors by being a smartass about it. That Boyd seemed to think Raylan ever thought highly of him, enough so that any appearance of distrust would upset him, caused Raylan considerate pause, however, forcing those instances of trust, however fleeting or circumstantial, to the forefront of his mind, compelling him to reconsider the tightly coiled desperation in Boyd's eyes.

"Speak your piece," Raylan relented.

"Thank you," Boyd chastised. "As I was saying," Raylan narrowed his gaze, annoyed already, tonguing his cheek and shaking his head, "you gonn' need to save up on all you can get to support that baby girl of yours. Now, I understand that, Raylan. It's why you wanted Drew Thompson, why the biggest case of your career truly mattered, and it don't take but a simpleton to see that two plus two equals four."

"I'm gonna let that one alone."

They shared a leveled stare, a grin as broad as Raylan's own gracing Boyd's features.

Boyd looked up from under the limits of his shorter stature. "You know what?"

Raylan leaned forward, lanky and overbearing. "What?"

"Ever since your return to us, Raylan, I've been wondering what it must have been like for you, on that glorious day you finally escaped these hills. I remember like it was yesterday…and you being the broken record that you were. Getting' out of here was all you could talk about, with my own voice heard only here and there."

"Boyd, you sure we're sharing the same recollection?" Raylan gnawed in. "'Cause I vaguely recall barely getting a word in edgewise round you."

"I will admit to being quite the verbose young man," Raylan would have snorted up liquor were he drinking, "but it was you sayin' more with one look than any amount of words out of my mouth. You keeping your head down in them dog hole mines, like the rest us. Every once in a while, though, when you did come up for air, why, your eyes would be pleading with the heavens, begging for that way out of hell."

Raylan struck Boyd with a look of warning, one full of temporary sobriety and the promise of violence, but Boyd ignored it, right in what he felt he had to say.

"You saw the writing on the walls of them tunnels, Raylan, even when none of the rest of us did. At the time, I couldn't discern whether it was because you saw something better in you or that you had Arlo as your daddy that made you wanna wise up and run."

_Both_, Raylan thought but did not say. Not for Boyd. The man had a handle on his thinking well enough to know why he wanted for what he wanted. Even if Boyd'd never brushed Arlo in any way personal, everyone in Harlan County knew the man was volatile, that the world they lived in scoped no wider than the barrel end of a shotgun, that the divine law was their only respite and the business of coal the ultimate tribulation, and that the reality was motivation enough to want to escape their fate.

"I guess the why matters little, in the end." Boyd held his whiskey to the banister but didn't move to pick it up. "You got out."

"So did you."

"Finding yourself in a line of enemy fire and ducking for cover in open fields filled with landmines only makes you long to see something familiar again." Boyd shook his head, failing to smile. "No…I never left Harlan, deep in my heart, didn't have the means nor the inclination to do so at the time. You, on the other hand, already had one foot out the door when we last cowered down into the mines together. And Helen gave you the means to see it through, didn't she? Now look at you…a decorated chief deputy marshal."

"Not yet," Raylan said, feeling suddenly regretful for his incessant interrupting. Boyd didn't seem to mind as much as Raylan thought the man might mind, of being robbed of ease as he traipsed through memories past imaginings of what Raylan might or might not have been thinking or feeling or divulging, even unknowingly, at a time when paths crossed regularly in their youth. Even if sorry, Boyd's insistences still exhausted him. "Art's got another six months," he corrected.

"Art," Boyd mused, head tilting downward. "Your boss, Raylan?"

"You know he is, Boyd," Raylan frowned, hooking a thumb into his jeans and gripping his belt steadfastly. "Are we gonna rehash something or can we proceed with the present conversation?"

"I wasn't aware you were all that concerned with what I had to say."

"Then say it anyway and see if I care."

"That day I pulled you up from Myrtle Creek, and we were running for our lives, I ran, knowing, come hail or high water, I'd be back down in that mine the next day," Boyd continued, as if he'd never stopped talking, his stare hard but far from resentful. "You remember that day, Raylan?"

"Yeah…I do," like it was yesterday. Like the memory happened not but five minutes ago—it lingered in every second of every day, still, reminding Raylan what real fear felt like for the first time in his life. Flashes he'd have of his daddy coming down on him and his mama fled him in that moment, as every tunnel light he and Boyd raced pass threatened to flicker off and darken their path. A belligerent Arlo Givens just couldn't compete with the true terror of being buried alive or crushed to death while under a dig.

"When we broke surface, I saw in you what I never imagined for myself and thought, 'Oh, he ain't ever coming back."

"I remember everything, Boyd."

That Boyd spoke no further on it didn't surprise Raylan, as the knowledge shared between them said it all, what details Raylan's memory cared not to dwell on. Some truths were more benign than others, even funny, in a frightful way, like the fact that Boyd nearly didn't work that day, given his less-than-friendly run-in with the Foreman not a day before. His unnaturally acute sense of surroundings would've been lost to Raylan, whose observational skills were not yet so honed, and where would he have been then?

How could he forget who damn near didn't make it out alive?

"Look at you, Mr. Lawman…Mr. Family Man." Boyd's grin turned thoughtful, his eyes glazing over with distant imaginings. "I'll tell you one thing, Raylan Givens…ain't no child of mine going down a coal mine, no sir." Boyd picked up his whiskey, nodding, definitively, as he held it close to his chest. Another warm breeze blew by, catching Boyd's attention, pulling his gaze out into that peaceful afternoon, and Raylan reasoned the man might as well have moved in already, what with the way he looked…so at ease with himself.

What gave Boyd the right to rest his head at night?

"You see, I imagine the little ones'll be running round, out there. Never minding themselves, a luxury the two of us growing up had not. Our daddies being who they were, well... I'm determined to put an end to that, Raylan. Poetic in its irony, this'll be the place that sets precedent, the household that once witnessed so much pain and suffering will be a beacon of hope to those who think they ain't got a choice. They'll look to us and know that we chose our own fate, because the Givens boy that once lived here made it out and did him some good. That that Crowder boy who he shot had a choice, and he chose to stay. To prove that it ain't about where we live or the bloodlines we abide by but who we are and the decisions we make."

Boyd drank his whiskey, the succeeding silence giving Raylan time to reflect not on his own life choices but on Boyd's. Boyd Crowder, who chose the most dangerous position in coal mining, stringing wire-tapped explosives through deep shafts of hollowed earth. Who joined the army during active wartime and, subsequently, returned, only to put himself in another line of fire, on the government's radar, by not paying federal taxes. Making dirty bombs for neo-Nazi shitheads? Raylan could see it now, the sequence of events that turned Boyd, someone who never had much of an opinion on anyone or anything to any extreme degree, into a racist asshole. In the especially apt words of Boyd Crowder himself, it didn't take but a simpleton to know that imprisonment was but a series of institutions within an institution, and, clearly, Boyd chose one before one could be chosen for him. One connected to the loyalties of his daddy.

Boyd chose to hire himself out as a mouthpiece for Aryan shitheads. Boyd chose to rob banks and deal drugs.

Boyd Crowder chose to raise his gun, painfully slow, knowing full well Raylan had the drop on him, on that night where fate, ironically, enough, intervened on Boyd's behalf.

Boyd made these decisions in life, true…but he did not choose this life. It was an inevitability. It's why Boyd returned, even after that day, to the deepest and darkest mines, believing this to be true.

"You want the place for two-fifty or not?" Raylan asked, frowning.

"Make it three-fifty, and you got yourself a deal."

With a hint of amusement in his eyes, Boyd put the bottle back down to free his hand. When he reached out between them, palm tilted upwards and out all expectant like, Raylan came to understand why.

Boyd smiled. "Should we shake on it?"

Raylan wouldn't know why he did it. Not before, not during, and not after. Usually, when drunk and confronted with assholes, he had the good sense to approach an impending altercation with a decent bit of lighthearted trash talk. Throwing punches wasn't a last resort, more of an open option, really.

So when Raylan reached out and shook hands then gripped Boyd's firmly and pulled him forward, he had himself convinced of his intentions. That he'd finally reached his limit, as far as tolerating Boyd Crowder went, and working out the quickest way to get rid of the man was all that seemed to matter. Arlo, a cop killer, a petty thug and a pitiful father, who only ever expressed his love and concern through anger or violence…the point being, the man had been let go.

Raylan had only himself and Boyd to thank for that.

Unfortunately, for everyone involved, Raylan possessed another bad habit while pleasantly or otherwise shitfaced, one that had landed him in quite a few fights, with both men and women, all of his own instigating. Thinking he'd gone in for a gut punch, Raylan stumbled back, instead, with Boyd pressed into him, his free hand having found its way at the back of Boyd's head, grasping at short wisps of that wild hair of his.

A part of him, the rational, sane part, demanded that the other man be released and get the beating he deserved, but the irrational, insane part of him reckoned this way better. Surely, somewhere, amid all that white supremacy bullshit rhetoric, merged in with classical teachings of Christian superiority, not to mention Boyd's days of ministry work, there'd been mention of the evil that was an act of homosexuality. For good reason, Raylan had it in his head that Boyd might fight him off and be on his way faster than he could ever think to seal the deal on the house. The moment dwindled on, however, and Raylan could sooner swear to hearing distant slurry ponds in their sluggish procession moving faster than the time it took for Boyd to push him away.

Boyd didn't do much else but reciprocate, just as determined and equally bruising, as if to prove a point. That he knew a desperate move when he saw one and that Raylan wouldn't get what he wanted so easily. Boyd's hands reached up, seizing his shoulders with sinewy fingers spread, and Raylan silently swore at whoever's bright idea it was to open their mouths. If not for the fact that the other man was wise to his purpose, right then and there, he would have put an end to it, but no…hands groped for dominance, as the seconds crawled by, the stench of clashing colognes and aftershave and the taste of strong whiskey taking the senses, and Raylan recognized this for what it was.

He'd never lost a game of chicken in his life, not growing up, not in school, not in training, and certainly wouldn't now, not to Boyd Crowder, of all people.

When they did finally part it was because they needed air, both simultaneously shoving the other away in favor of oxygen. Boyd started at readjusting his coat, over what Raylan now knew intimately to be his smaller frame, as he himself darted for Boyd's half-emptied bottle of Jim Beam, snatching it from the banister and downing the rest.

"Well…" Boyd began, shakily, because, even in some sure state of shock, he couldn't be helped to not have the first word. Raylan, content with sloshing remnants of whiskey down his throat, couldn't be bothered to pay him much mind, after that, not in any perceptive way at least. After what just transpired, the moment felt just a bit too uncomfortable. "If you are done trying to ruffle my feathers…" Raylan could feel the leer on Boyd's lips, as if they remained pressed against his own. "There's something I wanted to ask of you."

"Oh," Raylan managed, face strained, smile tight, brow raised and eyes squinted, the word escaping him in a breathless chuckle. "There's something _else_ you wanted from me."

"The reason I came all the way up here, Raylan."

"Oh, so there's _another_ reason why you're here," Raylan said, voice rising, flitting the bottle in his hand around to articulate his less than ecstatic surprise about this, "and _now_ we're just gettin' to it."

"I think it's safe to say we can dispense with all the bullshit now, Raylan," Boyd drawled, pressing back against the banister, with elbows propped up behind him, his impassive complacency more palpable than ever before in recent pasts. "Wouldn't you agree?"

Raylan braced himself against the front porch, just as Boyd had, tipping his hat a pinch forward to block out the blinding brightness of the sunny outdoors. He kept his head down, staring tentatively at the ground, only momentarily, before getting over whatever it was that kept him from looking at Boyd directly.

"I think …I ain't ever gonna get rid of you, Boyd."

"Either that's your unique sense of humor talkin' or you don't sound all that optimistic."

"Should I be?"

Their eyes met, Boyd's easygoing stare watching his one of world weary apprehension, and Raylan couldn't stop from wondering why the other man hadn't yet taken that much deserved swing at him. Instead appeared the Boyd Raylan used to know, a man too untroubled to hold a grudge, his live and let live mentality making coal mining seem more like a passing fancy than an inescapable hell, a place where he could take digs hurled at him and his daddy's criminal enterprise with a grain of salt, knowing that, at the end of the day, he'd get paid to take shit.

Even when Raylan knew there to be more to it than what laid surface deep, a misery that manifested after every new clearing Boyd'd crawl out of, a momentary fear of the next shaft being the one to fall in on him, and Raylan realized that what he really wondered was what it was Boyd expected to get out of this that kept him so friggin' docile.

"No, Raylan, I suppose not," Boyd said, breaking out one of his smaller, less infamous smiles, "especially with what I'm about to ask you next."

"Oh joy."

"Now, Raylan, you'll understand that I wouldn't ask this of you if I didn't think you the one person qualified to assume the position."

"As your only reputable associate, I imagine."

"No, Raylan," Boyd chided, a sudden somberness about him, causing the short hairs at the nape of Raylan's neck to stand on end, "as the only friend in this world I trust with my life and the lives of those I love."

"Jesus, Boyd," Raylan breathed, shifting uneasily. "What the hell is it?"

It meant enough to silence Boyd, whatever it was, and, any other day, Raylan would count his blessings. Boyd worried his bottom lip with perfectly straitened teeth, though, tightened his hands into fists, and…god damn it, Raylan thought, gripping the banister a bit tighter himself. Boyd looked like a man that'd swallowed his tongue, once a slick-talker caught up in words too heartfelt to take lightly, and Raylan, for the life of him, couldn't well figure out what it was while so begrudgingly wasted.

That he wanted to know was bad enough.

"In your own time"—

"—I want you to be my Best Man, Raylan."

"I beg your pardon?"

"What?" Boyd snapped, suddenly peevish and shifty. "Did you not hear me?"

"Oh, I heard you," Raylan shot back, deadpan in his spitefulness. "Evidently, I've grown a fondness for listening to bullshit." The words came out a jumble, in all honestly, them having spoken simultaneously and so suddenly that he couldn't be too certain of what'd been said. Besides, Boyd was being an asshole about it.

"You always were a miserable drunk, Raylan Givens, so I'm gonn' let that one go"—

"How kind of you"—

"—and ask you again."

"I'm sorry…" Raylan found space on the grill stand to set the last, now empty, bottle of Jim Beam down, coming back round quick and hostile. "Remind me again what the question was?" he asked, face contorted with indignation, lips tightening and eyes twitching, as he turned on Boyd, "'Cause I don't recall being asked one."

"I'm asking you to be my Best Man, Raylan."

"Hmm," Raylan hummed, shrugging. "I thought that's what I heard," he mumbled through a deep inhale, dragging his hands down against his waist. "You understand…my uncertainty? 'at's not something I'm asked on a daily basis."

"Well, Raylan, if not dependant on the influx of close friends you, surely do, possess gettin' themselves hitched on daily basis's…can you rightfully take offense?"

"Put it that way…guess not."

Raylan dropped his head and contemplated his boots, grinning like a god damn idiot, eventually looking up to find Boyd equally unhinged with unwarranted enjoyment.

"Guess I'm a last resort, though, what with Johnny locked up and your old army buddy going M.I.A."

Boyd bent in one of them scrawny legs of his and stretched out, chest puffing in even breaths.

"Colton Rhodes," he said, like honey dripped from the tip of his tongue, the fond memories held about the name evident in the pull of his lips and the glint in his eyes…and Raylan worked over a bad taste not even good whiskey could wash from his mouth. "I won't deny that, had your fellow marshals not run him off, on account of Johnny, Colt might've made himself a good groomsman, and my cousin, that two-faced son-'bitch, as blood kin, would've made groomsman by default," Raylan's ears perked at a definitive 'T', Boyd's love affair with proper diction inappropriately hilarious for such a sobering tone. He did his level best not to grin as Boyd soldiered on his candid march, intense in quiet words. "However, they ain't Best Man material."

"You think I am?"

"I trust you"—

"—with your life. Yeah, I got that."

"I trust you to be a better man than me, Raylan." Boyd pushed up, pressed forward, and, given what happened when last they stood so near, Raylan thought to step back but didn't, sort of stubborn that way. He could find a reason to, Boyd being Boyd and all, but Raylan just didn't feel like it. "Now, I don't regret the choices I've made in my life. They've lead me to the here and now, to Ava, and to you," he paused, tilting his head, "my friend and savior."

"I shot ya, Boyd."

"With good reason, Raylan." Boyd'd get no disagreement there. "I can't think of anyone better to have, at my side, when I take that final leap, than the man who's always gonna show me the greater good, even if it means putting me in my place."

Bewilderment troubled Raylan's demeanor, as he asked, in measured pace, "You need me to stop you from doing wrong, Boyd?"

"No, Raylan," and, to Raylan's credit, he didn't think to shove off the hand Boyd rested upon his forearm. "I know you to be the one person in this world who won't ever hesitate to tell me to do what I already know to be right."

Boyd Crowder logic at its finest.

'_Is Crowder completely full of shit?'_

'_He is…I just don't know if he believes it or not.'_

Some four years ago and, still, Officer Choate didn't know the half of it, or the full of it, or an ounce of it, and, hell, Raylan didn't know if he knew either anymore. The question once brought him peace of mind, to do his job here the way no outsider could, because he'd always know what the Kentucky State Police couldn't possibly ever really know. What the U.S. Marshal Service didn't know. Art would never know. That Harlan wasn't Kentucky, its denizens a complicated breed, far from anyone's imagining, set in their ways of loyalty, dishonesty, hope, and failure. Harlan was Harlan and Boyd…? Boyd was Boyd, still, after all these years.

All these years and Raylan…? Raylan still had hope.

"Alright." The word escaped him so low that he thought he might've imagined having said it, but Boyd, quietly attentive and deathly still, gathered his answer, the slight part of his lips and the sharp intake of breath that followed as good an indication as any.

"Alright," Boyd repeated slowly, eyes narrowing, and Raylan bit the grin that tugged angrily at his lips. "Alright what."

"Alright," Raylan repeated, hushed once more, tipping his hat as he leant his body forward and back. "You've convinced me, Boyd. Why so surprised? After all, that is what you do best…convincing people. Or did you forget what we were just talkin' 'bout?"

"Ah, no, no…" Boyd shook himself from a stupor, removing his hand from Raylan's arm. "I mean, pardon my incredulity, but I had myself convinced it would be a whole lot harder than that."

"Yeah, well…" Raylan shrugged, staring off into the trees. "Truth is, Boyd, I'm tired of pretending that this shit ain't normal. You are who you are, and if me being your guilty conscience in any way impedes you being an asshole, then you should count your lucky stars that, maybe, I'm just too drunk to say no. Then again," he offered up a sidelong leer, "maybe that's why you weren't too keen on me drinking to begin with. Clear head an' all…"

"Well, like I said…you always were a miserable drunk, Raylan Givens," Boyd said, eyes growing weary at the knowledge. "Can you blame me for wantin' your head clear, lest you start makin' decisions you'll regret when sober?"

"I don't know, Boyd. Ask me tomorrow, when I'm sober."

"You know…I don't think I have your number." Raylan gave him a look, as if to suggest the implication that Boyd, in fact, should, could kiss his ass. "Though, I must say, having a Deputy US Marshal visit my bar on the regular gives the establishment some level of legitimacy, it's hardly practical. Guess you could visit us, here, every now and then," Boyd tilted his head back, gazing up at the house, "but that's still quite a drive, I imagine, from Lexington to Harlan and back again."

"So this Best Man business," Raylan cut in because, well, why the hell not? "I don't recall having had one, myself."

"Well, that don't surprise me one bit"—

"It's my understanding, though, that the honor comes with certain responsibilities."

"Why, yes, Raylan," Boyd patronized, bearing teeth in another broad smile, "such as…?"

"Hell if I know, off the top of my head," Raylan bristled, repositioning himself against the banister. The two of them both stood leant up against the front porch, staring off where the gravel path leading up to the house disappeared down the hill and into Harlan Proper, every once in a while, affording each other the odd, menacingly affectionate glance. "I'll get back to you on that."

"You take your time, Raylan."

"Of course," Raylan took a deep inhale to breathe out the rest, "I might just have to do it by proxy, being Best Man and all…"

Raylan didn't look but suspected a cold stare to match that hardened voice of Boyd's, as Boyd stated, "What do you mean, Raylan?"

"Well, I could go Stag and meet some wonderful lady folk, of that I am sure," Raylan said, reasoning with the tip of his boots, "but the mere thought just depresses me. Now, I have a certain special someone in mind, and I don't think I'd go without her, but, and this is unfortunate, I'm 'fraid she don't quite meet your skin color requirement."

That earned him a critical stare, one he reciprocated in kind.

"Your lady marshal friend," Boyd said, and, Raylan had to admit, he was surprised the man knew who he'd been referring to, if not all that surprised that he'd remembered her. "What was her name?"

"Deputy US Marshal Rachel Brooks." Raylan palmed his Stetson back, squinting eyes up at that clear blue sky. "Yep, it's a shame, too. Rarely does our line of work afford her the opportunity to get done up like most other girls…" His eyes fell on Boyd, feigning ignorance as he confronted the frown upon the other man's face. "What?"

"Oh, Raylan," and Boyd started inward, false and apathetic in his smile and stare. Raylan now identified that as a facial distortion of Boyd's while discussing matters of race. Like that day, in what seemed like a lifetime ago, when a series of circumstances had led him to some new kind of Boyd Crowder, in his white supremacy camp-slash-church lair, where he recalled having witnessed an expression of equal emptiness.

Not to mention the crack about the Mexicans.

"Maybe you don't know me."

"On this, I think the swastika ink on your arm would beg to differ."

"Reminder of a misspent youth, Raylan."

"I'll say."

"Well, rest assured, no stipulation of any sort will exclude any person of any creed, color, or affiliation from being a guest of my and Ava's wedding."

"Oh yeah…? When is that, by the way?" Raylan heaved, unfazed by the sudden lethargy about his voice. So was the price of those dumb enough to engage Boyd Crowder in conversation. He rested back against the banister even more now, practically supporting the whole of his weight with it.

"I don't know, Raylan," Boyd said, visibly restless about genuinely not knowing, "but when I know, you'll know."

"Let her choose." Boyd whipped his head in his direction, evidently confused and looking for an explanation. "Let Ava choose the day," Raylan reiterated, shrugging. "For some reason, that shit matters."

"Mm…" Boyd nodded, studiously, with eyes kept on Raylan. "Is that what you did?" he asked. "Did you let Winona choose?"

Raylan's face screwed up, as if the foulest of smells had drifted in by wind and crept into his skin. There wasn't a foul smell at all, he knew, but the memory of one, the nauseating stench of a steamed sewage runoff brought up by an unexpected rainfall. Just thinking about it made him want to keel over and make waste. "Winona got work leave, but I thought to pick a day that better agreed with my work detail."

"Meaning not even your wedding day could drag you away from your lawman ways."

"Yeah, well…" Raylan rubbed at his eyes. "Suffice it to say Winona didn't take too kindly to that. Then it rained on our wedding day, and a nearby sewer main overflowed and ruptured, contaminating everything within a five mile radius."

"I'm guessing the smell tainted the whole wedding?"

"In its brief entirety," Raylan sighed, frowning. "I couldn't give a damn, at the time. All I could think of was how beautiful Winona looked walking down that aisle." He could see it, too, like it happened not but a day before, when it rained, and it smelled, but she was beautiful, and his reasons for doing anything in life made for an easy distinction between black and white. The memory made him smile, even if he didn't quite yearn for it now, and happy enough to want to share it with Boyd Crowder. "I thought I'd married a fallen angel that day."

"Who says you didn't?"

Boyd's smirk grew, unrelenting, subtle as Raylan's own appreciative grin.

"In any case, let Ava decide," he pressed, determined to emphasize this point. "Don't put a target on your back to give anyone a reason to blame you for something you can't possibly control."

"Duly noted."

Then another thought occurred to him, and, with eyebrows pinched, Raylan raised a cautionary hand, adding, "And don't kill anybody. Bad enough I feel the need to address this, but killing people, near or around the time of your wedding day," he smacked his lips with the snap of his tongue, cringing, "probably ain't the best way to celebrate a holy matrimony."

"Raylan, you say that like you expect the worst out of me."

"Just callin' it like I see it, Boyd."

"And what do you see, Raylan?"

Did he really have to ask?

"Bad is bad, Boyd, try as you might to think otherwise. Even when good, do I expect bad to do bad?" Raylan just looked at him, really looked at him, amazed by how easy it was for Boyd to paint himself an innocent within his own warped picture. "Yes. The answer is yes."

Raylan watched Boyd drag his eyes away from him, nodding in acknowledgment, lashes noticeably drawn down as he stared at the ground, a wispy smile about his face.

"'I exist as I am, that is enough, if no other in the world be aware I sit content, and if each and all be aware I sit content.'"

Boyd made a show of straightening the lapels of his jacket, flattening the creases in his vest as he moved away from the front porch, moseying forward and off the walkway, pivoting when the soles of his boots touched upon dirt patched grass.

"You know, Raylan…" Boyd addressed him with one tattooed forefinger lifted, looking like a born again preacher, with his padded, sharp coat, shirt pinched with dumbbell cufflinks at the wrists and collar buttoned high to the neck, pants ironed and shoes polished, face shaven and hair relatively tame for one Boyd Crowder; the epitome of well-groomed and, deceptively, righteous living that, even in these parts, afforded him the right to scold rumpled shirted, ratty jeaned, scruffy, drunk lawman like Raylan Givens. "I think any outsider passing through these hills would be hard pressed to believe us friends."

With that Boyd turned heel, one hand raised in parting as he slipped the other into a jean pocket, his sudden departure both a blessing and a shock to Raylan's system.

"We can't be friends, Boyd."

His profession demanded a certain level of wherewithal when it came to the reactions of others, so it didn't surprise him when, after calling out to Boyd's retreating back, with the only statement he could think to say that made a lick a sense to his better judgment, Boyd turned back, staring at him from an angle, to claim his rebuttal.

"That don't mean we ain't, Raylan."

Raylan felt himself letting Boyd go, rather than being rid of him at last.

"I'll call you, Raylan," Boyd said, resuming his walk away and, in his wake, provoking Raylan's overly inebriated foul mood.

"Whoa, hold on there, Walt." Boyd did, indeed, hold on, turning, again, with a damn well knowing smile on his face. Raylan ambled away from the front porch, only slightly, trusting himself to stand on his own, but only a humble few inches from the banister. "Figured I'd call you and we'd exchange numbers, is that it?" Boyd cocked his head in a show of confusion, the feigned ignorance playing in his eyes driving Raylan's own wild with annoyance. "I ain't givin' you my number, Boyd."

"Already have it," Boyd said, articulating every word as though they his last. His brow rose, forehead wrinkling, as he stared up at Raylan, eyes wide and telling, and said, in hindsight, "You might wanna get that agency you've been working through to take you off the owner's contact list, if your number gettin' out so worries you."

"Duly noted," Raylan fumed. His relenting was quick and uneventful, seeing as that pretty much was his fault. To his credit, however, he didn't expect to hear interests from any sketchy individuals he knew personally.

Boyd started to shuffle backwards, smiling smugly, his eyes not parting with Raylan's until the uneven ground heading down the hill required him to turn forward again.

"Oh shit."

Boyd stopped again, with his right foot paused in a crescent lull against the grass, looking towards the sky with what Raylan could only hope was annoyance. If it was, it didn't stop him from turning back around, again, or the superiorly patient grin he bore. "What now, Raylan."

"It just occurred to me," Raylan began and ended, gesturing with a flip of his right hand. Boyd's look of mild impatience only encouraged in him an insufferable affability. "Your bachelor's party, now…that's on me, is it not?" he grinned with false caution.

"Yes Raylan," Boyd nodded, almost haughtily, smiling still. "That's on you."

"Oh, good." Raylan scratched at the scruff on his chin. "I like to think I can throw a good time, when I want to."

"I should hope so," Boyd declared, one foot off the property but taking that step back, his interest renewed and noticeably peaked. "Though I think it's meant to be a secret, I am curious. Tell me, what did you have in mind?"

Their perilously sobering talk gave Raylan a fair amount of clarity and, though, he'd liked to think that, even if he'd been as wasted as the time Boyd arrived, he would have came to the same conclusion, his less than conventional idea for a bachelor's night out seemed to him more premeditated than most murders.

"Raylan?" He must have looked up to something, because Boyd appeared pricelessly unnerved.

"Boyd, do you like ice-cream?" Raylan thought the question off putting enough, but, like always, Boyd had an answer ready at the tip of his tongue.

"Well, it's funny you should ask me that…"

Always.

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